TAXI? CALL JOHN CASSIN '94
WHEN PAUL SAMPLE '20 returned to Dartmouth as Resident Artist one of the men he most wanted to paint in Hanover was John Cassin. His first study, here reproduced, was done in charcoal. It reveals a fine face, and reminds one of an old western plainsman. Paul's desire to paint John Cassin was not wholly owing to the fact that he was an excellent subject. John was an old friend, who used to drive the Dartmouth Jazz Band, forerunner of the Barbary Coast, all over the surrounding country some twenty and more years ago. Mr. Cassin remembers them all: Sal Andretta, Vince Breglio, Ben Bishop, Bill Terry, Don Mac Donald, and Din and Paul Sample. Most of them, and John in particular, remember an exciting trip to Brattleboro which took five or six hours owing to a heavy snowstorm. Instead of plowing the road the Highway Department had rolled it down with rollers which made the going nearly impossible, but Mr. Cassin got them back for chapel the next morning. There was always much ribbing" between the members of the orchestra and "Handsome Jack" Cassin, all of it highly friendly, and Paul speaks with feeling of what a good friend he was to them all.
NATIVE OF MAINE
John E. Cassin was born in Bar Mills, Maine, which is situated about nine miles north of Saco on the Saco River, on October 20, 1867. This little manufacturing town had drawn his father Edward Cassin from Canada in about the year iB6O, and soon after he had married Olive Tarr, the daughter of a Cornish, Maine, physician. John was their youngest son. His parents sent him to Limington Academy, (and John still goes to his class reunions, the most recent being in 1938), located not far out of Portland, just off Route 25. The headmaster was then, "William G." Lord, the father of Professor George D. Lord '84, Professor Emeritus, of the Dartmouth faculty, and John became proficient in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and English. He has a fine collection of early editions of Virgil, and takes a real pleasure in this possession.
John worked his way through Dartmouth, mainly by working in the gas plant which used to supply the lighting for the College, and by working for his meals. He couldn't afford the $50 necessary to join a fraternity, and contrary to rumpr, did not make Phi Beta Kappa. He graduated with the class of 1894, one of 86 men, 59 of whom are still alive. "A good record," says John with pride. Among these are Professor Ashley K. Hardy, John E. Allen, Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Matt B. Jones of Boston, Trustee Philip S. Marden. John attends all of his class reunions and knows everybody, as they did in those days, in his class.
After college Mr. Cassin taught for a while in Alstead, New Hampshire, and in Jamaica, and Jacksonville, Vermont. Asked what he taught, he said: "Nearly everything." These academies were coeducational. In Jamaica he married, in 1899, Nettie Cheney. They have had no children.
John didn't like teaching so returned to Hanover, where for eighteen years he worked for the College, mainly in Wilder Hall. About 1916 he went into the taxi business where he has remained ever since.
Before his marriage he made a memorable trip to Washington, and he remembers well that he attended the U. S. Senate when they voted, just after the blowing up of the battleship "Maine," an unprecedented defense bill of $50,000,000. Chicken feed today, but as John says: "You can't stop the wheels of progress!" He remembers, too, that he built the first fire in the boiler house when Dartmouth College first used steam (1898), and he remembers, also, when during the coal strike of 1900, the heating building burned forty cords of green wood a day to keep up steam.
John has had a happy life, and doesn't know any place he'd rather live than in Hanover, New Hampshire. You are sure to see him next June, when you return, at his old stand just by the C. & G. corner.
JOHN CASSIN '94 A charcoal sketch of the well-known Hanover figure drawn by Paul Sample '20,artist in residence.
